


Raccoon Direction

by titanium (rubidium)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: A thought experiment that manifests in 2300 words worth of shitting on Simon Cowell, Alternate Universe, I wish I didn’t have to clarify this point but this is not furry porn, It’s not even furry adjacent, M/M, Tax Fraud, a thought experiment if you will, it’s just an exploration of their lives as raccoons, raccoons - Freeform, satire?, wildlife vigilantism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:28:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25476130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubidium/pseuds/titanium
Summary: What if the gentlemen of One Direction weren’t gentlemen at all, but rather....raccoons?
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson, Louis Tomlinson/Harry Styles, Zayn Malik/Liam Payne
Comments: 6
Kudos: 32





	Raccoon Direction

**Author's Note:**

> I got rip-roaringly drunk back in 2016, which was a pretty par for the course Tuesday afternoon for me at that time. As I lay under my grand piano gazing deeply into my dog’s eyes (also quite standard), I asked myself two questions: was I living my #bestlife? and What would it be like if the 1D boys were raccoons instead of human beings?
> 
> The first question felt impossibly vast and unanswerable, so I scurried right along past it to the second one. In this hypothetical alternate reality, would the raccoons play instruments? What would be their passions? Their driving motivations? What moral framework would give shape to their interactions? Would they be political?
> 
> The next morning, I discovered the following story on my google drive and was so deeply ashamed that I pretended it didn’t exist for about four years. 
> 
> Cue Covid-19.
> 
> After I was permitted to take my partner home from the hospital, I discovered my entire world perspective had shifted. My pride had evaporated overnight. I did ridiculous little dances with our dogs. I read children’s books aloud, and did the voices. I composed and sang parody songs to inanimate objects. I regarded any conversation without at least one Dad Joke as a personal failure. 
> 
> What value could my frigid dignity possibly hold when it robbed me of the chance to see a smile from the person I love most? Its austerity was gutter trash in comparison to their laugh. So I set the 2016 scene for them, and read them Raccoon Direction.
> 
> They laughed so hard they were, quite literally, breathless. It was terrifying for us both. Once our pulse oxometer showed they were okay again, they made me promise to share this magnificent œuvre du merde with the rest of the world. It isn’t finished, and I highly doubt it ever will be.
> 
> Bon appetit.

“Stop that!” Simon roared, chest heaving in the chill night air. “You stop that at once, you fucking raccoons!”

The boys froze, staring at him guiltily. They were standing tail-deep in a lovely little sea of trash they’d fished out of Simon’s bins. As far as trash went, it was a particularly good haul. This was mostly because Simon seemed to be an unusually wasteful, consumptive person. Not that they were judging him for it. Generally speaking, the boys tried to avoid forming judgements about people based on the things they threw away. After all, they personally spent a large portion of their time poking through human refuse: mostly for food, but if they were being strictly honest (which they preferred to be whenever possible), also for entertainment. People threw out some seriously funny shit, sometimes. So. Glass houses and stones, and so on.

Louis peeked over the the lip of his bin, eyes twinkling. Simon looked particularly wrathful tonight, he thought, as he dropped a half eaten banana over the side of his bin for later. Bananas were his boy’s favorite, after all, and Louis's boy deserved nothing but the best.

Not that Harry was his “boy.” 

Sometimes he tried to imagine what they would be like together as humans. Obviously, the raccoon way of life was quite different from what a human life entailed, but he was pretty sure that given their human druthers, they’d be living together. When the five of them snuggled together at night, sometimes he’d bury his nose in the fur at the nape of Harry’s neck and think about it. Humans talked an awful lot about working together in places called offices, so he would try to imagine what one of those would be like, and how it would feel to return from it at the end of the day to a home that he shared with only Harry. A space that was filled with their things. And their smells. Maybe even their cubs. Or children, as the humans called them. 

Jesus, he was going all mushy and soft. Much like the banana he’d just salvaged. 

Louis rubbed his tiny, precious hands together. “I reckon there’s a haul of rotten doughnuts to be found in Walsh’s bin tonight. I saw him bring a box of them home from the market this weekend, and he can’t have eaten them all by now. Suppose we stop by his place on our way to the burrow?”

The other boys scrambled out of their respective trashcans to follow Louis back into the forest. Simon, of course, heard nothing but the squeaking and chattering typical of an ordinary raccoon. He’d never been very long on intuition.

One of Simon’s waxing strips was stuck to Liam's tail. It bobbed in front of Harry's face every time Liam took a step. Up and down. Up and down. Finally Harry couldn't bear staring at the curly little hairs with their dangling fleshy roots anymore, and ripped it off to Liam's profound dismay.

“What the fuck was that for?” Liam wept, clutching his tail.

“That,” Harry said, “was my limit.”

“What he means,” Louis hastened to add, “is that he doesn’t like watching Simon’s discarded chest hairs wiggling around in front of his face as you walk along. He’s very sorry about your tail, of course, but honestly. It’s better for everybody this way.”

“You’re so smooth, I would elect you to political office if raccoons had a government,” Harry whispered. “You’re so smooth, you could do a hundred on the highway, and the police officer who stopped you would give YOU money. You’re so smooth, men who regularly wax their chests are jealous of how naturally smooth you are.”

Louis blushed.

Liam flipped both of them off over his shoulder.

“Why do you think Simon hates us digging through his trash so much?” Zayn asked.

The five of them were snuggled up in their burrow like a set of nesting spoons. Liam’s tail curled up over Zayn’s waist as if to soothe away his question, and Zayn frowned, stroking its new bald spot absently. “It's literally garbage. Not exactly like he's saving it for later, is it.”

“People get funny about their trash,” Louis said. He tucked his little nose into the fur at the back of Harry’s neck, and exhaled as hard as he could. Harry squirmed against him, giggling. “A lot of the time, it feels like they have something to hide.” 

Just like Louis. 

As Harry snuggled back against him, Louis ran his hand down Harry’s front, making sure he wasn’t cuddled up against Zayn.

“Hey, guys?” Niall called.

Instantly, Louis popped out of his trashcan. “What’s wrong? Is the monster back?”

The “monster” to which Louis was referring was, in fact, Simon’s corgi Napoleon (who shared his namesake’s predilection for compensating for his runty size with aggression).

“Nah,” said Niall. “Thank fuck. The bastard got my knee, last time. I haven’t been able to climb a tree properly since.”

Louis winced.

“Shit,” said Zayn, popping up next to Niall. “Niall’s right. This doesn’t look proper at all.”

“What doesn’t look proper?” Harry asked.

“I’ll tell you what doesn’t look proper,” said Liam irritably. “Zayn digging around in the same fucking can as fucking Niall. Go on, Zayn. What are you playing at?”

“You and I shared a burrow alone for _one_ night. Emphasis on ‘one.’ Once,” Zayn snarled irritably, flicking his striped tail. “That was it. Move on. Go drop round Cheryl’s tree. I’m sure she’d be _thrilled_ to see you.”

“For the last fucking time, _Cheryl is a squirrel._ It’s not like that, and we both know it.” Liam was sitting in a particularly dark patch of shadows, but he sounded clearly like he was scowling. “Don’t try to pin this on me, Mister I-feel-like-rummaging-through-Niall’s-trash-barrel.”

“Keep talking like that much longer, and this trash won’t be the only thing of his that I rummage through tonight,” Zayn hissed through his teeth. 

(“What does that mean?” Harry whispered to Louis.

“The fuck if I know,” Louis whispered back.)

“Enough!” Niall squeaked ragefully, waving the paper he’d been examining in the air. “I reject my role as the straight friend who forces my romantically inclined friends to acknowledge their feelings for one another through a series of comedic misunderstandings, because I am a strong, independent raccoon and I deserve a storyline of my own. Take a look at these papers, and tell me what you think.”

Thus began the longest night of their lives.

It honestly would’ve been tremendously helpful if one of them had ever filed some sort of tax returns.

They had hauled Simon’s financial documents home with them and spread them out on their burrow floor so they could examine them more closely. Unfortunately, none of them had any grounded conceptualization of the way human finances worked. A man named IRS seemed to be suspicious of Simon; that much was clear. 

Liam sat back on his haunches and pointed to a bit of paper where Simon was attempting to ‘write off’ his collection of vintage cars as a work expense. “That can't be right. What does he need a fleet of musty old cars for?”

“As I recall, you liked them well enough yourself when we broke into his garage. Remember the backseat of the corvette?” Zayn tried to look up at him from under his lashes. The effect was rather spoiled by the fact that his lashes were indistinguishable from his fuzzy eyelids. 

“I feel like I never know what they're talking about,” Harry lamented, and Louis nodded.

“No, Liam’s right,” said Niall. He picked the paper up in his tiny hands and examined it closely. “He's calling them a business expense, but he hasn't even got a real job. He claims he's a…” he tussled through the papers until he found one with Simon’s listed occupation, “....celebrity, but he doesn't do anything, really. He doesn't make music, or tell jokes, or pretend to be things he’s not.”

“That's acting,” Louis supplied helpfully.

“Right, which he doesn't do. He just films himself making people cry after they've sung him a song, and then he goes home and masturbates as he watches it on the telly. He doesn't need a fleet of expensive old cars to do that.”

“What if we monitored him?” Zayn asked. “I bet we could take the bastard down if we had eyes on him from the inside.”

Dread ripped through Harry like a knife through soft butter. Not his baby, god, _not his baby_. 

He subtly sidled in front of the teddy bear Louis had given him. He was so sneaky, nobody would notice as he hid it from their beady, mercenary little gazes.

“Harry,” said Niall.

“C’mon, Harry,” said Liam.

“I know you love that bear, Hazza, but you love it because I gave it to you,” said Louis. “You love it because you love me. I will steal a million trash teddy bears for you, if you wanted me to. You know I would, baby.”

A single tear slid down Harry’s snout, and trembled for an instant before dropping to the stolen oriental welcome mat they used as a rug.

“Fine.” The word seemed to rip itself from his throat. “Fine. Take the bear. It’s for the greater good, I suppose.” 

“You suppose correctly,” said Liam. 

The next night, they convened on the impeccably manicured lawn of Simon’s mansion. Or rather, they walked there as a group from the burrow they all shared together. Liam seized Harry's bear in his mouth and shimmied up Simon’s drainpipe. The boys held their breath as Liam leapt nimbly from the drainpipe to the windowsill of Simon’s open office window. Once he’d scurried safely inside, they let out a collective exhale of relief.

“Oh, yeah,” Louis snarled. “This motherfucker is going DOWN. Down like a fat kid on a see-saw.”

“That’s sizeist,” Harry pointed out gently. 

“Down, like…” Louis racked his brain. “Down like Trump whenever he needs to sound even vaguely educated about the basic workings of our political system.”

“Word,” said Niall. 

They paused for a moment, stewing in embarrassment for the 2016 presidential election. They could tell the situation was dire because the second-hand embarrassment was so acute, it was beginning to affect the local wildlife. Even the local deer were getting in on dragging Trump, and they were the nicest guys around.

***************************

“Guys,” said Niall. 

Louis patted Niall’s tail affectionately, but kept staring at the Windows 1997 computer monitor connected to the teddy cam that Liam had hidden in Simon’s office.

“GUYS,” Niall shrieked.

Instantly, he was surrounded by his solicitous raccoon brethren. They watched as Niall compulsively scrubbed his hands together in the water. 

“Oh, man,” said Liam, looking deeply concerned. “That is some, uh, sweet hand-washing, there, buddie. Good job?”

“I’m not washing my fucking hands,” said Niall. He pulled his empty paws out of the water, and stared at them. “You know how we always wash our food before we eat it, right, guys?”

“I mean, yeah.” Louis wrinkled his furry brow. “We literally eat garbage, mate. If we didn’t wash it off at least a little, we would probably die from salmonella, or something.”

“That sounds like a gangster,” Harry mumbled. “Sal Monella. Went to jail for killing a guy just to keep him from talking. He’ll kill again once he gets out. He doesn’t care. He’s just here for the money. He’s a gangster, Sal is.”

Niall pinched the bridge of his fuzzy nose with his paw.

“We always wash our food,” Louis prompted helpfully. “With you, Ni. What about it?”

“You remember that box of funny squares that we pulled out of Simon’s trash?” Niall asked. “I was washing them for us so that we could eat them for dinner, and the most fucked up thing ever happened. Watch this.”

He pulled a square out from the box marked ‘S U G A R C U B E S’ at his feet and plunged it into the puddle. The boys exchanged concerned glances over his head. Niall scrubbed at it hard. (It was generally accepted that he was the best food-washer among them. The lad was meticulous, in a word.) As he scrubbed and scrubbed, his hands seemed to come closer together. Louis bent forwards, mesmerized. Suddenly, Niall’s paws seemed to be pressed together. Louis pulled them out of the water, and patted down his palms. 

“You’re fucking joking,” he said flatly. “You are fucking kidding me.”

Niall’s hands were empty.

“Mate, I wish I was,” Niall said mournfully. “I’ve washed half the box. It happens every time. I honestly have never seen anything like this in all my time as our designated food-washer.”

“You’re not the designated food-washer,” objected Zayn. “None of us are designated, official anythings. We’re a true commune; we divide all forms of labor equally among ourselves so as to be fair.”

“Yeah, okay.” Niall flicked his tail irritably. If it happened to smack Zayn in the nose, it was thoroughly and completely an accident. “So, in this perfect commune, where all labor is divided equally, I seem to get a significantly larger-than-average share of food-washing duties.”

“Well, you’re very good at it,” Liam said defensively. “When Louis washes the food, it always still smells a bit fetid when we eat it.”

“ _Because it’s trash_ ,” Louis hissed. The fur stood up at the nape of his neck. “It’s not _my_ fault if the trash we fish out of bins still smells like trash when we eat it. If it didn’t repel us at least a little, it probably wouldn’t even _be_ trash.”

“I think the trash you wash smells wonderful, baby,” said Harry. He gave Louis’ fuzzy ear a little lick.

“Jesus, you two. Get a fucking burrow or something,” Niall groaned. “Okay, everybody take a square and give it a try.”


End file.
